Pretending
by freezy queen
Summary: And it was a shame that Santana Lopez had been blessed with such a beautiful voice, because she was born to pretend.


_So, it's been a while since I last wrote something Glee, and, since I've been rewatching season one, I really wanted to write something about Santana's character from that season. Enjoy!_

* * *

She first acts at the tender age of five.

Back then, it's for her own benefit. To make _them_ pay.

It's recess, and she had been happily playing with a glittery pink ball that she'd snatched from right under another girl's nose. Santana doesn't care about manners or right and wrong; all she knew was _she_ wanted the ball, and that meant no one else could have it.

But, of course, her fellow pupils had other plans.

As she bounced it, giggling happily to herself, dark hair swinging around her face, a figure blurred in front of her and the ball did not jump back into her waiting arms.

"Hey!" she yells, trying to get her toy back from the group of smirking boys, the leader of which is clutching Santana's ball. "It's _mine_!"

They don't listen, however; only laugh and run away to play with _her_ ball. Her sparkly ball, the one she worked so hard to get and has now lost in a second. Santana watches them kick the ball, arms crossed and a pout on her small features. Then she has an idea.

"Miss! Miss!" she cries, with dirt on her hands and her hair falling out of its messy pigtails. The teacher - who had been gossiping with a parent and completely ignoring the scene - turns around and bends down to Santana's level.

"Yes?"

The mini-Santana's eyes begin to water, and she points an accusing finger over to the group of boys.

"They pushed me o-over!"

She doesn't even think to hide her smirk when they're not allowed outside the next day.

* * *

Her acting becomes more frequent at the age of eight.

Then it's for another reason; to be liked. Santana likes to be liked. She _needs_ to be liked.

It's the age when her peers are beginning to become critical; everyone isn't friends with everyone anymore. Maybe she's a little bit different, a little bit strange. Not everyone goes home to an Abuela who isn't too fond of their Mommy. Not everyone sings their way through the day, from the silly songs in the charts that her friends like to the older songs that Daddy sings as he dances with her around the kitchen to TLC's _Waterfalls_.

"_Don't go chasing waterfalls, please stick to the rivers and the lakes that you're used too_.."

Santana likes the song; it makes her happy.

She doesn't tell the kids in school, that, though. They don't like her. The few friends she has all leave when she tries to tell them about the songs she learnt in choir, because it's _lame_ and they're _super_ grown up now, with the make-up borrowed from older sisters and their little handbags. Of course, she could go and play soccer with the boys, but she can't do that. That would make her a full outcast, and Santana likes to be included. Her heart always gives a little flutter when she's handed a little pink invite to the birthday party of someone she doesn't like, or when the skinny Asian girl runs over to Santana during gym and asks to be partners, and she likes that. Besides, the boys are too busy most of the time poking fun at Rachel Berry, the singing girl, who's always been kind of nice to Santana even though they've never really talked and she spends most of her lunchtimes indoors practicing for her many dance recitals.

One day she sees Rachel getting followed by a group of boys, the same ones who she'd gotten into trouble back in kindergarden. She looks pretty scared, and one of the boys notices that Santana's watching. Rachel does too, and her small features twist into a 'help me!' expression, because the boys obviously don't want to watch Rachel's rendition of _Itsy Bitsy Spider_ from the second-grade talent show.

"Seen something, freak?" asks one of the boys. He's a full head taller than her, and his upper lip already has a fine layer of dark hair that sometimes Daddy laughs at and Santana joins in, but she doesn't laugh now. He's pretty scary, and she knows that it's a mistake to even be here. Santana looks over at Rachel, her scared face and tiny Mary-Jane's, then back at the boy.

"No."

* * *

Then she's in high school.

Now her acting's for a different reason altogether; she wants to be popular. To fit in. Maybe it's the same thing as wanting to be liked, but Santana's matured in more ways than one since the days of being a desperate eight-year-old in glittery boots.

Santana struts down the hallways in her red-and-white Cheerios uniform and her shiny new sneakers, dark hair pulled back into a tight ponytail, smirking. She's only a freshman, a little fourteen year old, and she's already got what many seniors are desperate to have.

She can see the people looking at her, because she's the new girl, the one from _Lima Heights_. It's not a nice place. Santana stopped inviting people home after a friend's mother saw Santana's address and refused, pointblank, to allow her daughter to speak to Santana again, even though Sam was one of her best friends and they had matching 'S' necklaces. It's a bad place, where bad things happen, and maybe Santana's riding on that reputation because even though she knows the names of most of the kids at McKinley, it's still a new school and she can be reinvented. She can stop being small and dorky and start being cool.

Hours later at the end of the day, after a horrific cheerleading practise that involved running around the football field one hundred times without stopping (anyone who did stop was instantly off the squad - and, even though she was lapped twelve times and only just managing to walk at the seventy-lap mark - she couldn't risk that), Santana's stumbling through the empty hallways of McKinley with a group of her fellow Cheerios when she hears singing.

It's that Rachel girl again; the singer from elementary school. They haven't spoken in years, but she hasn't thought much of it. As she pauses to watch Rachel, Santana can't help but admit that she's good. She seems to be engrossed in the music, too; her eyes are closed, and she's belting in a way that would give Santana a sore throat if she tried it. As Rachel finishes, a creepy-looking male teacher comes into view and begins to talk to her.

A giggle comes from the older girls.

"Wow, what a loser." one of them, a redhead, says. The other girls nod in agreement, but Santana isn't sure why. What's wrong with singing?

"Glee club? It should be called _freak_ club." another giggles, even though it isn't funny. Santana's eyes meet Quinn Fabray's. The blonde's a new member of the Cheerios, too. They weren't friends before - Quinn thought she was too good for people like Santana - but, right now, she's Santana's only hope. Green eyes blaze into brown.

_Just agree._

"She's always been a freak. I'm not surprised she's joined freak club." comes out of Santana's mouth before she can stop it.

Her popularity was guaranteed from that day.

* * *

Before long, she's there in freak club herself.

It's not too bad, actually. Even though they've just come last at regionals and been publicly humiliated, Santana wasn't lying when she told them that the club is the best part of her day.

Not that she's stopped acting, though. Now she's popular, now she's got everything she wants, she's desperate to keep it. There's only one thing worse than not being popular; losing the popularity that you had.

She's been on the Cheerios and an official _popular girl_ for two years now, and she likes it. It's fun to see girls looking at her in envy. It's amusing - if not a little creepy - to see Jacob Ben Israel lust after her in her Cheerios skirt. And when she walks down the hallways with Brittany, pinkies linked and golden friendship bracelets swaying, she feels included and liked.

But that doesn't make it easier.

She's known as someone who says what she feels, but she doesn't say it all. She doesn't complain when Berry - and Finn, who's role she doesn't quite understand, and now she's beginning to think Mr Schue's got some kind of mancrush on him, because, seriously, he sounds constipated every time he opens his mouth and listening to him attempting to hit more than the two notes in his range is painful - get yet another solo and she's only awarded a few lines with Puckerman in some weird renditon of _Don't Stop Believin'_, even though she's got just as good a voice and doesn't make weird expressions when she sings. She doesn't lash out when she gets yelled at _again_ by Ms Sylvester for not trying hard enough when her muscles are aching and even her hair is in pain. She pretends it doesn't break and smash her heart into millions of tiny pieces when Brittany leaves early after a make-out session because Santana feels things that are so, so wrong, but feel so, so right when it's just tanned limbs entangled with pale, freckly ones.

It's funny to think, sometimes, when she's singing to her reflection in the mirror as she applies her make-up and pencils in her eyebrows before school, because, really, she's surprised somebody hasn't figured it out by now. Realized that she's a big fake who gets by in life by clutching at the tailcoats of those bigger than her. Noticed that the way she acts to everyone doesn't quite make sense, because surely a popular girl has nothing to be angry about?

And, of course, it was a shame that she'd been blessed with such a beautiful voice, because she was born to pretend.

* * *

_Reviews are always appreciated!_


End file.
